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I asked this question in the free period that we had today; let's look at some answers by my fellow co-mates:

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It’s no surprise that I love to drive. As a medic practically living in the hospital, getting behind the wheel is sometimes the only time I have to myself. It has been a little over a year that I got my licence and every drive since, has given me great pleasure. It’s interesting how I don’t feel any fatigue when I am just sitting behind the wheel after a long day; how my mood instantly shifts to a more stable temperament.

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The second series of 'Junior Doctors: Your Lives in Their Hands' has just started showing on BBC3.This programme follows FY1's and 2's Aki, Amieth, Andy, Ben, Lucy, Milla, Priya and Sameer as they start work at the Chelsea and Westminster hospital in London, facing all the trials and pressures of a junior doctor, whilst being constantly filmed.

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It is strange to make it all the way to medical school and be confronted with the promise of adult learning having largely come from mainly school backgrounds. It is stranger still to be asked to have an attendance book signed after every clinical session within the hospital. It is the mixed message which causes the most ... Read More »

The justification for trying to integrate empathy into our medical school training is questionable. The assumption is that we all feel empathy at all times in order for us to be able to feel it. But we are the person we are and sometimes for a variety of reasons, we may not feel empathy. The seminal work regarding the people we are was written by Carl Rogers in 1959 and his assertions are as relevant today as they were then. Has it occured to the people who design our teaching that patients can actually tell if someone genuinely feels empathy for them. Showing it is one thing but feeling it is another. I propose that the time has come to cease this charade and be what we are best at - ourselves. If we happen to feel empathy for a simulated or real situation on the way, this would be great. But neither should it matter if we don't. This doesn't mean that we are striving to be anything less than an excellent doctor. Put simply, you can't teach some things. Empathy is felt, not taught.  ... Read More »

QOFs buy Porsches!! GPs don't do any real work, all they do is refer. GPs don't practice real medicine. Why the hell would you want to be a GP? I'm not sure about you, but there seems to be a lot of stigma around medical students wanting to be GPs where I am. From personal experience, my partner wants to be a GP and his ... Read More »

Who doesn’t love Scrubs? Although a comedy show, I think this programme excellently captures many aspects of the intensity, difficulty, and satisfaction of hospital life. It paints the doctors, nurses, patients and porters as hilarious exaggerations of people we’ve all met on the wards. Anyone know a doctor with a narcissistic god-complex like Dr Cox? Or a nurse trying desperately not to sell out her peers as she climbs the career ladder like Carla? Anyway, I remember watching DVD’s of this show every evening  in my third year on my first clinical out-block: it certainly made the long days filled with surgery and ward-work a lot easier knowing that JD, Turk, Carla and Elliot were going through the same thing, and were surviving.  

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She shares my birthday from this aug 25th!!!!! God gave me the opportunity to take her out of here mother's womb:)

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It was one of those days in medicine where you feel stretched beyond your elastic limit following a series of unforgiving weeks. We were tired in every way; our brains felt saturated and our feet hurt. It was during that blessed hour at the student lounge when we finally got to crash into bean bags and flop supine on couches, that we found ourselves thinking aloud:

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